Going Home to Edisto

This poem was written by Ellen Murray, a co-founder of the Penn School on St. Helena Island in South Carolina. The poem was originally published in the National Anti-Slavery Standard on March 18, 1865.

They met before the day,
The stars were looking dim,
The damp night air grew eloquent
With Christian prayer and hymn.

They knelt to pray again,
The last time on this land,
This shelter they had sought, to ‘scape
Th' oppressor’s lifted hand.

Now as the flag moved on,
Their olden lands were won
For freemen’s step and freemen’s home,
The fresh, new life begun.

They said, amid their prayers,
Sweet words of faith and trust
To Him before whose changeless word
Armies and hosts were dust.

They said, in ancient phrase,
“If thou, Lord, dost not go,
Carry us not from hence; thy love
We cannot, Lord, forego.”

They mingled in their prayers
Full blessings on the North,
The arm that fought for them and theirs,
The hand that led them forth.

The Northern soldier slept
That hour a calmer sleep,
The widow in the Northern home
Ceased for a while to weep.

They sang of Jordan’s stream,
They sang their Joshua’s name,
And vowed as long as earth endured
His praises to proclaim.

Till fell the sunlight red
Through broken chink and pane,
On forms that swayed, as to the winds
Sways Summer’s first-fruit grain.

And with that burst of praise,
And in the sunrise glow,
They left their exile for a home
On long-loved Edisto.

It seemed to us who heard
As if the age rolled back,
And Israel’s children knelt beside
The dreary, desert track,

With Canaan full in view,
The pillared cloud before,
And sunny plains and harvest fields
Mantling the Jordan shore.

And now we say: “Our God,
No change can come to Thee,
In every age a faithful Guide,
Giver of Liberty.

“How can we fail to trust
Thy kindness in this day,
Or take sad counsel of our hearts
When great events delay?”
E. Murray